Mining, Oil & Gas Exploration Industry Pay Trends
Updated April 5, 2012
2012: While some industries struggled to see wages rise at all, workers’ earnings in mining oil and gas grew briskly in Q1 2012. The year started with explosive gains of more than 2.5 percent quarter-over-quarter and almost 5 percent growth year-over-year, which was the highest annual growth of any industry tracked by The PayScale Index.
2007-2011: Though high gasoline prices may have challenged the rest of us, they’ve kept wages generous for workers in the mining, oil and gas exploration industry over the last few years. Similar all-time-high prices for commodities like copper and gold only helped to keep this sector's wages strong.
While the market price for workers nationally rose only about 5 percent between 2006 and Q4 2008, workers in the mining and extraction industry saw their market price rise more than 10 percent.
From this dizzying height, wages in the mining industry dropped significantly in 2009. They then rebounded about 1 percent the following year, rising fairly steadily through 2010 before taking off at a brisk pace, ahead of national averages, in 2011.
